….or so it seems. I’m a sucker for the photography technique called “tilt-shift,” in which the subject of a photo or film appears to be in miniature. The YouTube Channel Little Big World has several tilt-shift videos on China, including this one called “Little Big Wall of China.” (email readers, click here to watch the…
Month: December 2013
The Rabbit Has Landed
You have probably heard by now that on Monday China successfully dropped a landing craft on the moon. After the Chang’e 3 landed, it deployed a lunar rover named Jade Rabbit (Yutu) which will poke around for a few months. As you can imagine, the Chinese are very proud of this, and the official media…
Laugh Often
I spotted this slogan painted on a construction wall in the Wudaokou neighborhood of Beijing last summer. Let’s make it the motto for our week, shall we? {translation of Chinese characters: Love Wudaokou}
Left-over Mao Statues
In a post titled Last Mao Standing (March 2012), I put up a couple of pictures of the Mao statue in Chengdu, and wrote this about Mao statues in China: There was a time when statues of Mao were ubiquitous, found on every college and factory campus, every government building, and every public square. In most…
The Many Countries of China
Over the Thanksgiving holiday I read China Airborne, by James Fallows. It’s a look at modern China through the lens of the country’s growing aviation industry. In the introduction, Fallows writes about what he calls “the many countries of China,” (p. 6), explaining the diversity and complexity of a country that we tend to (wrongly)…
Reading Up on South Africa
With the passing of Nelson Mandela this week, I thought it would be a good time read up on South Africa. I ordered Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation, the story of how rugby brought healing to a nation. I look forward to digging into it. …